"I do make way!" he said; "How can you doubt it? A word from me, and the ma.s.sed millions would rise as one man!"
"And of what use would that be?" enquired Lotys. "The soldiers would fire on the people, and there would be riot and bloodshed, but no actual redress for wrong. You work vainly, Sergius!"
"If I could but kill the King!" he muttered.
"Another king would succeed him," she said. "And after all, if you only knew it, the King may be a miserable man enough--far more miserable, perhaps, than any of us imagine ourselves to be. No, Sergius!--I repeat it, you work vainly! You have made me the soul of an Ideal which you will never realise? Tell me, what is it you yourself would have, out of all your work and striving?"
He looked at her with great, earnest, burning eyes.
"Power!" he said. "Power to change the mode of government; power to put down the tyranny of priestcraft--power to relieve the oppressed, and reward the deserving--power to make of you, Lotys, a queen among women!"
She smiled.
"I am a queen among men, Sergius, and that suffices me! How often must I tell you to do nothing for my sake, if it is for my sake only? I am a very simple, plain woman, past my youth, and without beauty--I deserve and demand nothing!"
He raised himself, and stretched out his arms towards her with a gesture of entreaty.
"You deserve all that a man can give you!" he said pa.s.sionately. "I love you, Lotys! I have always loved you ever since I found you a little forsaken child, shivering and weeping on the cold marble steps of the Temesvar place in Buda. I love you!--you know I have always loved you!--I have told you so a hundred times,--I love you as few men love women!"
She regarded him compa.s.sionately, and with a touch of wistful sorrow in her eyes. Her black cloak fell away on either side of her in two shadowy folds, disclosing her white-robed form and full bosom, like a pearl in a dark sh.e.l.l.
"Good-night, Sergius!" she said simply, and turned to go.
He gave an exclamation of anger and pain.
"That is all you say--"Good-night"!" he muttered. "A man gives you his heart, and you set it aside with a cold word of farewell! And yet--and yet--you hold all my life!"
"I am sorry, Sergius," she said, in a gentle voice; "very sorry that it is so. You have told me all this before; and I have answered you often, and always in the same way. I have no love to give you, save that which is the result of duty and grat.i.tude. I do not forget!--I know that you rescued me from starvation and death--though sometimes I question whether it would not have been better to have let me die. Life is worth very little at its utmost best; nevertheless, I admit I have had a certain natural joy in living, and for that I have to thank you. I have tried to repay you by my service--"
"Do not speak of that," he said hurriedly; "I have done nothing! You are a genius in yourself, and would have made your way anywhere,--perhaps better without me."
She smiled doubtfully.
"I am not sure! The trick of oratory does not carry one very far,--not when one is a woman! Good-night again, Sergius! Try to rest,--you look worn out. And do not think of winning power for my sake; what power I need I will win for myself!"
He made no answer, but watched her with jealous eyes, as she moved towards the door. On the threshold she turned.
"Those three new a.s.sociates of yours--are they trustworthy, think you?"
He gave a gesture of indifference.
"I do not know! Who is there we can absolutely trust save ourselves?
That man, Leroy, is honest,--of that I am confident,--and he has promised to be responsible for his friends."
"Ah!" She paused a moment, then with another low breathed "good-night"
she left the room.
He looked at the door as it closed behind her--at the chair she had left vacant.
"Lotys!" he whispered.
His whisper came hissing softly back to him in a fine echo on the empty s.p.a.ce, and with a great sigh he rose, and began to turn out the flaring lamps above his head.
"Power!--Power!" he muttered--"She could not resist it! She would never be swayed by gold,--but power! Her genius would rise to it--her beauty would grow to it like a rose unfolding in the sun! "Past youth, and without beauty" as she says of herself! My G.o.d! Compare the tame pink-and-white prettiness of youth with the face of Lotys,--and that prettiness becomes like a cheap advertis.e.m.e.nt on a h.o.a.rding or a match-box! Contrast the perfect features, eyes and hair of the newest social "beauty,"--with the magical expression, the glamour in the eyes of Lotys,--and perfection of feature becomes the rankest ugliness! Once in a hundred centuries a woman is born like Lotys, to drive men mad with desire for the unattainable--to fire them with such ambition as should make them emperors of the world, if they had but sufficient courage to s.n.a.t.c.h their thrones--and yet,--to fill them with such sick despair at their own incompetency and failure, as to turn them into mere children crying for love--for love!--only love! No matter whether worlds are lost, kings killed, and dynasties concluded, love!--only love!--and then death!--as all sufficient for the life of a man! And only just so long as love is denied--just so long we can go on climbing towards the unreachable height of greatness,--then--once we touch love, down we fall, broken-hearted; but--we have had our day!"
The room was now in darkness, save for the glimmer of the pale moon through the window panes, and he opened the cas.e.m.e.nt and looked out.
There was a faint scent of the sea on the air, and he inhaled its salty odour with a sense of refreshment.
"All for Lotys!" he murmured. "Working for Lotys, plotting, planning, scheming for Lotys! The government intimidated,--the ministry cast out,--the throne in peril,--the people in arms,--the city in a blaze,--Revolution and Anarchy doing their wild work broad-cast together,--all for Lotys! Always a woman in it! Search to the very depth of every political imbroglio,--dig out the secret reason of every war that ever was begun or ended in the world,--and there we shall find the love or the hate of a woman at the very core of the business! Some such secrets history knows, and has chronicled,--and some will never be known,--but up to the present there is not even a religion in the world where a Woman is not made the beginning of a G.o.d!"
He smiled somewhat grimly at his own fanciful musings, and then, shutting the window, retired. The house was soon buried in profound silence and darkness, and over the city tuneful bells rang the half-hour after midnight. Four miles distant from the "quarter of the poor," and high above the cl.u.s.tering houses of the whole magnificent metropolis, the Royal palace towered whitely on its proud eminence in the glimmer of the moon, a stately pile of turrets and pinnacles; and on the battlements the sentries walked, pacing to and fro in regular march, with regular changes, all through the night hours. Half after midnight!
"All"s well!" Three-quarters, and still "All"s well" sounded with the clash of steel and a tinkle of silvery chimes. One o"clock struck,--and the drifting clouds in heaven cleared fully, showing many brilliant stars in the western horizon,--and a sentry pa.s.sing, as noiselessly as his armour and accoutrements would permit, along the walled battlement which protected and overshadowed the windows of the Queen"s apartments, paused in his walk to look with an approving eye at the clearing promise of the weather. As he did so, a tall figure, wrapped in a thick rain-cloak, suddenly made its unexpected appearance through a side door in the wall, and moved rapidly towards a turret which contained a secret pa.s.sage leading to the Queen"s boudoir,--a private stairway which was never used save by the Royal family. The sentry gave a sharp warning cry.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
The figure paused and turned, dropping its cloak. The pale moonlight fell slantwise on the features, disclosing them fully.
"T is I! The King!"
The soldier recoiled amazed,--and quickly saluted. Before he could recover from his astonishment he was alone again. The battlement was empty, and the door to the turret-stairs,--of which only the King possessed the key,--was fast locked; and for the next hour or more the startled sentry remained staring at the skies in a sort of meditative stupefaction, with the words still ringing like the shock of an alarm-bell in his ears:
""T is I! The King!"
CHAPTER IX
THE PREMIER"S SIGNET
The next day the sun rose with joyous brightness in a sky clear as crystal. Storm, wind, and rain had vanished like the flying phantoms of an evil dream, and all the beautiful land sparkled with light and life in its enlacing girdle of turquoise blue sea. The gardens of the Royal palace, freshened by the downpour of the past night, wore their most enchanting aspect,--roses, with leaves still wet, dropped their scented petals on the gra.s.s,--great lilies, with their snowy cups br.i.m.m.i.n.g with rain, hung heavily on their slim green stalks, and the air was full of the deliciously penetrating odour of the mimosa and sweetbriar. Down one special alley, where the white philadelphus, or "mock orange" grew in thick bushes on either side, intermingled with ferns and spruce firs, whose young green tips exhaled a pungent, healthy scent that entered into the blood like wine and invigorated it, Sir Roger de Launay was pacing to and fro with a swinging step which, notwithstanding its ease and soldierly regularity, suggested something of impatience, and on a rustic seat, above which great cl.u.s.ters of the philadelphus-flowers hung like a canopy, sat Professor von Glauben, spectacles on nose, sorting a few letters which he had just taken from his pocket for the purpose of reading them over again carefully one by one. He was a very particular man as regarded his correspondence. All letters that required answering he answered at once,--the others, as he himself declared, "answered themselves" in silence.
"There is no end to the crop of fools in this world," he was fond of saying;--"Glorious, precious fools! I love them all! They make life worth living--but sometimes I am disposed to draw the line at letter-writing fools. These persons chance to read a book--my book for example,--that particularly clever one I wrote on the possibilities of eternal life in this world. They at once s.n.a.t.c.h their pens and write to say that they are specially deserving of this boon, and wish to live for ever--will I tell them how? And these are the very creatures I will not tell how--because their perpetual existence would be a mistake and a nuisance! The individuals whose lives are really valuable never ask anyone how to make them so."
He looked over his letters now with a leisurely indifference. The morning"s post had brought him nothing of special importance. He glanced from his reading now and again at De Launay marching up and down, but said nothing till he had quite finished with his own immediate concerns.
Then he removed his spectacles from his nose and put them by.
"Left--Right--Left--Right--Left--Right! Roger, you remind me of my drilling days on a certain flat and dusty ground at Coblentz! The Rhine!--the Rhine! Ah, the beautiful Rhine! So dirty--so dull--with its toy castles, and its big, ugly factory chimneys, and its atrociously bad wine! Roger, I beseech you to have mercy upon me, and leave off that marching up and down,--it gets on my nerves!"
"I thought nothing ever got on your nerves," answered Sir Roger, stopping abruptly--"You seem to take serious matters coolly enough!"
"Serious matters demand coolness," replied Von Glauben. "We should only let steam out over trifles. Have you seen his Majesty this morning?"
"Yes. I am to see him again at noon."
"When do you go off duty?"